This section introduces aspects that may help facilitate a better understanding of the inventions. Accordingly, the statements of this section are to be read in this light and are not to be understood as admissions about what is prior art or what is not prior art.
Some installed optical communications systems, particularly submerged systems, use amplifiers running in a constant power mode. These systems typically require that an optical path, or line, is presented with a constant total power irrespective of the number of channels deployed. To achieve this, additional optical signals are sometimes introduced to maintain the line loading at a desired level. The amplitude of these sources may be adjusted as needed to attain the desired constant power loading of the optical path.